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Topic: THE POTATO - CDDA on a 486DX (Read 4073 times)

Finally got the potato up and running with the 4th power supply! I got it booting but found that the cd rom and the floppy are not working :(. Floppy is probably a lost cause it just makes a terrible grinding sound when asked for data. I do have another one but I may not need to get it working unless I cannot get the cd rom to boot anything. Cdrom is not seen in the bios. Bios wont save any data even past resets so thats an issue. The bios battery was a small coin cell LiIO battery. Never seen one in a computer like this before only teh cr32's. I would just add any coincell to it but I am unsure if the system is passing power back to it for a charge and adding a normal one would probably result in bad things. Anyway Ill see what I can get going. Will probaly have to load linux externally and then move it to this system....

Finally got Debian 2.1 installed on the system. Found out that the 64mb of memory that I thought I had was not actually that much. It only has 32mb of extended with about 6mb onboard. :(. There was a sticker on the memory on both chips that said 32 so i assumed they were 32mb dims. Yeah no it must have been some sorta kit that was 32 together.

Anyway I did get it installed but booting has been a problem.... For some reason the fucker wont boot from the HDD and dos says the disk is not even there... SO I have to boot from floppy now which SUCKS hard.

Here is me installing from floppies ( not the most awesome method to be honest )

Damn cool stuff.This makes me wish I still had my AlphaStation so I could run DDA on a non-x86 CPU :D

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Its like a fun family cookout, except your family is burning in flames while trying to eat you. -secretfireI'm more excited than a survivor on meth and toast'ems. -NighthawkThe the giant wasp is slammed through the zombie brute!

Well Debian 2.1 is only 7 floppies + 1 for drivers and 1 rescue one. So thats a total of 9 to get the system semi installed. You also needed a set of packages on a ISO file that is not hosted on the debian webpage anymore. However the acutal debian distro called POTAO was 2.2 so Im going to try and find me a ISO image with the binary files so i can do a full instal. I am also going to replace the HDD tonight when I get home with another one as this one is not showing up even in DOS and i cannot boot from it. I suspect there is something wrong with it.

Debain 2.2 is 17 floppies and also needs either a binary ISO file you burn onto a disc or you have to have internet access so that apt can pull them from the Debian archive. Since I do not have a ISA network card im going to try and track down the ISO.

The last 2 weeks I have been celebrating my birthday and was doing some other stuff so I wasent able to mess with this computer much.

So no go on the bigger drive... Looks like this computer has the 540mb limit for drives. I find it funny that the cdrom that was in these computers can hold 750mb but the biggest drive you can put in them is 540mb.... Man PB were some cheepo bastards back in the day. I could fix this with a drive overlay (shudder) or buy a expansion card but both of them seam extreme for just getting it working. For now i think ill just stick with using the original 540mb drive.

As a side note I did find the documentation on what all the jumpers do and connections on the board. Good news is there might be an external battery connection i can use and a jumper i can set to use it. This would allow me to not have to deal with re-soldering on a new bios battery.

I also on a whim emailed Phoenix Bios to see if they would be willing to send me the original BIOS asm source files for phoenix bios circa 1994, I highly doubt they will but you never know.... :P

For additional Potato Points, I want to see somebody play Cataclysm on a computer that's literally powered by potatoes.

I have an ARM-based portable gaming console lying around somewhere that runs on AA batteries, just need to sort out 6V or so of potato power and we'd be cooking.

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Its like a fun family cookout, except your family is burning in flames while trying to eat you. -secretfireI'm more excited than a survivor on meth and toast'ems. -NighthawkThe the giant wasp is slammed through the zombie brute!

man packard bell, that is an old memory, i remember that company, they installed some shitware OS over win 3.1 on ours which did nothing but make all programs fail to start aside from internet explorer.

man computers sucked back in those days, but it was a step up from the 3 shades of green floppy driven machines i used at school.

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1. disassemble lockers 2. disassemble broken console in the southeast corner 3. you now have the materials to craft a metal funnel, 60L tank and a brazier 4. find a second shelter or rip another 60L out of a car 5. you now have infinite clean waterpeople ask THAT often.

Well Debian 2.1 is only 7 floppies + 1 for drivers and 1 rescue one. So thats a total of 9 to get the system semi installed. You also needed a set of packages on a ISO file that is not hosted on the debian webpage anymore.

Ohh man thanks for the link to the ISO images that will help immensly.

UPDATE: I was able to fix the drive and get an OS to boot direct from the drive. This was after making a new external battery and correctly guessing the polarity of the pins on the header. Crafted one up with some electrical tape ( very shitty job ) and got it connected. The bios now no longer bitches and clears when power is turned off. Now that I got that working I am actually starting to "like" the potato. Its little quirks and limitations are amusingly challenging. Its like its 1994 all over again :P

Oddly doing this fixed the drive and now DOS can see it and it boots correctly. I think im going to put on Debian 2.2 tho as its named potato and seams to have some features that normal linux has.... 2.1 is just a bit too archaic.